Provincetown, MA Coastal Erosion Rate
Is the coast eroding 2.8 miles west of Provincetown, MA?
2.8 miles west of Provincetown, MA, the coast is advancing, not retreating, at a measured 1.26 feet a year, sediment accumulating faster than any erosion USGS recorded here. At that rate, the shoreline has gained roughly 12.6 feet over the last decade.
What "Provincetown" means on this page
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Provincetown, MA, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 42.07, -70.23. The survey behind it runs to 2007-2009, in USGS's New England / Mid-Atlantic assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
What 1.26 ft/yr means over time
Holding the 1.26 ft/yr accretion rate 2.8 miles west of Provincetown, MA for 25 years would add roughly 32 feet of shoreline, again assuming nothing about the local sediment supply changes.
How solid is this number
Averaging 73 separate transects produced this segment's rate, with 3% individually reading as erosion, rather than relying on any single survey line. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.5 ft/yr. Sorted from fastest erosion to fastest growth across all 1211 measured segments nationally, this one lands at 1129. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2010-1119. For scale: Port Orford, OR, 2720 miles away, ranks 1028 of 1211 nationally for growth, 0.53 ft/yr, 0.4x this stretch's rate. Provincetown, MA, 1.9 miles off, is the adjacent measured stretch, itself no significant trend.
One address near Provincetown: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.